


Potential Carrier

by LucyCrewe11 (Raphaela_Crowley)



Series: Anastasia's Children [2]
Category: Anastasia (1997)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Children, F/M, Family, Hemophilia, Hemophobia, Minor Character Death, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25141465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/LucyCrewe11
Summary: Anya is happily married but fears having children, knowing she may be a carrier of Hemophilia, the bleeding disease that made her little brother's life miserable. A fear she can't bring herself to share with anyone; not even Dimitri.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Series: Anastasia's Children [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821211
Kudos: 29





	Potential Carrier

**Author's Note:**

> (written February 2014)

_Potential Carrier_

An _Anastasia_ Fanfic

They'd decided not to have any children.

Unofficially, at first.

Anya used the excuse that they were traveling, and children shouldn't be born on the road. Besides that, they were newly married, and young (she still only eighteen years old), so what was the hurry?

Dimitri more or less accepted this.

To be fair, at first he hadn't wanted any children either. He'd only suggested it -to his everlasting shame- because he suspected someone was watching them -someone who might have known him in Russia, remembering him as a conman- and he thought, foolishly, that perhaps if this person saw him with a baby -or even just a pregnant wife- well, he wouldn't be so sure this was the same man who'd tricked him out of his money after all, now would he? The conman this fellow recalled traveled with only an older gentleman, who much more obviously had blue blood flowing through his veins. Good old Vlad...

But of course Anya told him how utterly stupid and poorly thought out his plan was, and that no baby of hers -even if she _did_ want one- was going to be used as a prop to avoid potential prison time. Not to mention, he was just getting used to their _dog_ Pooka, whom he'd never originally liked, so how was he going to deal with a _baby_? Had he even _considered_ that?

And so Dimitri had to admit she was right. He was being an idiot.

Most embarrassingly of all, the man Dimitri thought was stalking them was...not actually stalking them... It turned out he was just some random lost bum, reeking of cheap wine, who happened to know a little bit of Russian and wanted to ask for some spare rubles!

Anya teased her husband mercilessly for _that_ one. "Oh, Dimitri, don't look now, but I think the hotdog vender is spying on us! And did you see the way the man driving the taxi today looked at you? Are you _sure_ you didn't run his business into the ground a couple years before we met?" And so on.

In the end, though, they couldn't travel forever, or even very long.

For, despite the fact that they joked about it, Dimitri's paranoia was not _entirely_ without cause. He could be caught for his past scams, if they traveled too many places in one shot. Someday he'd have to find a way around that, if he wanted to make anything like a living for them, but for now caution was required. He'd -too many times in the past- gone in and out of countries illegally. So, that meant, even trying to do things the right way -as a changed man- got confusing. Mainly because he wasn't really supposed to be in France in the first place. He was still a Russian citizen, even though he knew he'd never go back. Especially not with that wretched so-called revolution continuing its chokehold on daily life there.

The safest choice in the end was finally (only a week or so after Anya's nineteenth birthday) to settle down in a French villa courtesy of the dowager empress.

Dimitri bucked at this, initially. It felt too much like taking the offered reward money for Anastasia's safe return would have, but Anya eventually talked him into it. What other option did they _have_? Besides, she had assured him, she'd still expect him to look for work, and do whatever business he liked (within legal boundaries); she wouldn't make a kept man out of him.

But they had only been a year in their new home when Dimitri began to worry there was something deeply troubling his wife.

She'd always had nightmares from time to time, so that in itself was not what worried him. It was that they'd seemed to be getting _worse_ , keeping her up at night and making her moody and unstable during the day.

And sometimes the things she said in her overtired, breaking-point state were shocking.

On one of her most exhausted days, dark circles under her hollow-looking eyes, Anya actually confessed flat out that she didn't want to have any children with him. _Ever._ Case closed. Not even open for discussion.

That made little sense to Dimitri, unlike her refusal from before they'd had a proper home. He knew Anya loved children. She had told him enough stories about entertaining the younger ones at the orphanage when Comrade Phlegmenkoff made them sit alone in the corner for some imaginary offense. It had seemed obvious to him that, eventually, she'd want some of her own, and that he'd have to be the one to step up to the plate.

 _He_ was supposed to be the one wasn't _quite_ ready but made the leap into fatherhood anyway. Anya not wanting to be a mother wasn't part of the plan. It wasn't part of the way the world _worked_!

"Anya," he said, gently, "you're tired, and I'm sure if you think about-"

"There's nothing to think about!" his wife shrieked, glowering at him. "If you wanted babies, maybe you should have married somebody else."

"Whoa! Where did _that_ come from?" Dimitri blinked at her, trying to work out why she was being like this.

"I'm sorry," she said after a pause, putting her hand to her forehead. "I didn't mean that last part."

He patted her hand, a little awkwardly. "It's...it's all right."

"I should have told you before," she said distantly. Even though she used the word 'you', it sounded much more like Anya was talking to herself. Especially with the way she looked over her husband's shoulder when she spoke. "I'm sorry."

But however sorry she was, however much she'd tell him over and over again she would not have any children, she never once let the reason _why_ die on her lips.

_Alexei._

* * *

For a while, Dimitri let the matter be. Anya needed time to recover from whatever these nightmares were doing to her, and since she didn't want to see a doctor or specialist for help, rest was the only remedy he could give her that she'd willingly take. Whenever possible, whenever they didn't absolutely overwhelm her, she rested. Or _pretended_ to.

To reassure herself as much as her husband.

But time passed and color came back to her face and the circles started to disappear in fading layers. Her laughter returned, as well as her zest for practical jokes and teasing, and it really seemed to Dimitri that he had his Anya back. And it was to _her_ -the woman in her _right_ mind- that he thought he should again bring up the issue of their being childless for the rest of their married lives.

He wasn't saying _no_ , he wasn't trying to brush aside her feelings, but he had been too hasty. If he'd been a little older and wiser -just a few more years into the marriage- Dimitri would have noticed that for all the circles that disappeared, the darkest ones still remained like shadows under her eyes -making her look troubled even when she was laughing carelessly. He might have taken into consideration the fact that she still whimpered in her sleep, though she claimed the nightmares were not as vivid and didn't remember their contents more often than not by the time she'd fully woken. But he didn't think to.

He figured Anya was ready to _explain_ now.

She wasn't. "Why can't you just let it _go_?"

"Because I don't understand you anymore," Dimitri tried, sitting on the edge of their bed and taking off his boots. "It's like you're mad at me all the time now."

"It has nothing to do with you." Anya scowled.

"Well, I think it has _something_ to do with me," he pushed. "It's my future too."

"Why are you so obsessed with the future?" Anya demanded, reaching for a hairbrush on the vanity table. "We have a home, and a life, now. _We're_ a family."

"You think it's always going to be like this, that things won't ever change?" Dimitri asked her. "Anya, life is _full_ of changes. In the short time I've been alive, I've gone from kitchen boy, to conman, to somebody's _husband_. So you don't want a baby today. That's fine. _I_ don't want to wake up tomorrow and be a father. I don't think I'm ready. But what about a year from now? What about _five_?"

Anya finished brushing her hair and peeled back the sheets, crawling into bed. Reaching over, she slammed the brush down on the vanity and reached for the lamp to turn out the light. "Do we _have_ to talk about this?"

Dimitri got up and switched the lamp back on the minute she'd turned it off.

"Hey!"

Their dog, Pooka, appeared in the doorway, howling.

"What are you so afraid of?"

Anya swallowed. "What does it matter?"

"It matters to _me_ , Anya." He knelt by the bed.

Pooka jumped onto the bed and made his way over to Anya's lap. She stroked her dog tenderly, intent on scratching his soft gray ears, not looking at her husband's pleading face. It was too hard to answer him. Even _trying_ to respond now would bring tears to her eyes; she knew it would.

"You have to talk to me."

Anya turned off the lamp again. "I don't _have_ to do anything." She scooted herself down into the bed and buried her face into her pillow. "Stop ordering me around."

" _Fine_." In the dark, with her face pressed into the pillow, she couldn't see his glare, but she guessed his facial expression from his snappish tone. "I'll go to bed if you will."

"I _am_ in bed," came her muffled mutter.

He grunted and went back around to his side. "Good night."

"Good night."

They passed barely a minute in silence.

"Are you mad at me?" Anya's voice came softly as she propped her elbows up and lifted her face.

"No." It sounded more like a _yes_ , to her. "I'm sleeping."

"We don't need children." Her tone was almost a whisper. It didn't occur to him ( _then_ , anyway) that this was because she was trying not to sob. "Aren't I enough for you?"

Dimitri felt a wet puddle forming near his toes, and Pooka's warm dog breath. "The mutt is drooling on my socks."

This was not what Anya needed to hear. She really might have wept, but she was too outraged. A comment about their dog was not the reassurance she secretly craved. Even if he'd been brusque, she could have dealt. It was the complete avoidance of the question that upset her.

To him, though, the question settled as practically rhetorical. She knew he loved her, so it couldn't be a serious question, now could it? She was trying to make him _think_. He wished she'd just tell him what was wrong. He hated how women always had these dumb guessing games; where, if you didn't figure out by osmosis who smashed their biscuit, you 'didn't care enough'.

Yet, think he did.

* * *

Of _course_ Anya was enough for him. She was enough for him in a way no other woman in the world could have been. More than she knew -more than she'd ever understand.

In her perception, the first time he'd noticed her had been the day they'd met as Anya and Dimitri, in the old palace. She thought he'd fallen in love with a girl with no name and no past.

And that was true.

His first _real_ love was Anya, the maddening high-maintenance orphan who fell into his lap just when he needed an Anastasia lookalike.

But the person she'd been _before_ -the girl she'd just so happened to perfectly resemble- had been his first infatuation.

Anastasia Romanov had been his first crush.

Not because she was pretty, or because she was gentle with her dog -Jimmy or Joy or something- and her little brother, not in the least for her likeability, but because she was a troublemaker. She could spit further than any eight year old of her breeding and background ought to. She loved terrorizing the cook, whose authority Dimitri -at times without justification- resented. She even played pranks on her older, prim and proper sisters!

She could have been a brat through and through, could have been the worst person in the world, and he would have worshiped her from afar anyway.

Because what is more interesting to a boy who is forced to wash and stack plates for hours on end while a room away a state dinner -equally dull- is taking place, than a girl whose mischief causes a baron to seemingly fall over or develop gas, or a stuffy middle-aged lady drenched in diamonds to faint at the sight of a fake (or so Anastasia _claimed_ , when the Tsar questioned her later) frog?

Best of all, he never had to talk her. Dimitri liked to watch her, to see what she'd do next, but actually _speaking_ to her -trying to form an obviously impossible friendship- was far from his mind.

Besides, if by some crazy turn of events they _were_ friends, she might turn her pranks on _him_ next. And it was much, much more fun to see it happening to someone _else_. Better to be invisible as a piece of furniture next to the huge hulking target that was the unfortunate cook.

As long as there was no chance anything could happen between them, Dimitri secretly held the Tsar's youngest daughter in the highest reverence.

If she had ever made eyes at him or even really took note of him in any way, shape, or form, his infatuation would have turned to disgust in a heartbeat. For, naturally, it was not -at this stage in his life- _true_ love, but that constant selfish admiration. He liked her for doing the things he wished _he_ could get away with doing.

He liked her for her guts, nothing else.

What better proof was there of this indisputable fact than the day young Maria (the sister who was just a little older than Anastasia, and the closest to her in looks and mannerisms, save for the fact that she was softer-natured and not into practical jokes of any sort) bumped into him?

He'd been carrying a great tub of silverware that needed to be polished in time for the Tsarina's tea. She was having that creepy, smelly Rasputin over, to thank him for some service he'd supposedly preformed for the royal family.

Dimitri had heard Anastasia whisper loudly, in regards to this, "Why doesn't he preform us all a _bigger_ service and take a _bath_ once in a while? He stinks real bad."

The Tsarina promptly sent her to her room for her impertinence.

Luckily, no one heard Dimitri's snicker of amusement. Apart from the cook, who arched an eyebrow and chose to say nothing.

If he brought attention to the matter, it could anger the Tsarina, cause a dismissal, and then he'd have to break in a new kitchen boy. And Dimitri, for all his faults, at least knew where everything was already and had long ago gotten over his days of wandering parts of the palace he didn't belong in on the pretense of 'being lost'. The only similar irksome vice he possessed was sneaking out of the kitchen during major events -such as balls or entertainer performances- to get a good look.

Princess Maria, who shared a room with Anastasia and wasn't permitted go in there and entertain her sister while she was under punishment, had decided to play some kind of hopping and skipping game in the corridor.

That was when disaster struck.

Maria crashed into him, sending silverware flying everywhere.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" She sank down and started gathering spoons.

The cook would have expected him to say, "No matter, your Highness, don't trouble yourself," but Cook wasn't here right now, and Dimitri didn't see why he should.

Maria had _caused_ the accident, after all. And picking up the spoons wasn't doing her any harm. Not to mention she was so painfully slow about it, that by the time she'd gathered five spoons total, Dimitri had already picked up the rest of the silverware.

Smiling shyly, Maria had dropped the spoons into the tub he held out and stared across at him.

It apparently struck her that this kitchen boy was nice-looking. Unlike Anastasia, she'd begun to notice boys. She'd been around so few, aside from close cousins and her little brother, that the whole class difference issue wasn't entirely clear to her yet. Not the way it was to her older sisters.

From that moment on, Maria had started randomly gazing at him with those great, blue goo-goo saucers of hers whenever he went by. Much to Dimitri's growing displeasure.

Why did she have to _look_ at him so much? _Anastasia_ was going to notice sooner or later, and then she'd _see_ when he watched her setting up her pranks! Everything good in his life, everything he _enjoyed_ , would be _ruined_. Maria was going to turn him from furniture into a real boy.

I don't _want_ to be a real boy! Dimitri thought furiously. He wanted things to stay just the way they were.

Worst of all, Maria eventually stopped just looking, gathered her courage, and marched straight up to him. She somehow found him, despite the fact that he dove headfirst into the dumbwaiter to get _away_ from her.

Undeterred, the starry-eyed Russian princess announced, point-blank, that she was going to _marry_ him when she grew up and they were going to have twenty children.

"Ten girls and ten boys," she informed him happily.

Dimitri would have rather eaten dirt. At his age, he was not altogether convinced pretty, doll-faced Princess Maria did not have cooties.

In the end, he avoided her -even though it meant avoiding Anastasia, too, and pleasing the smug cook with his sudden 'dedication' to his assigned tasks- until she found love. _Again._

This time with a palace guard.

Less than a week later, when Dimitri overheard the girls' French tutor laughing about how Maria had been soundly scolded by the Tsarina for announcing her plans to marry her handsome guard and have twenty children, he knew at last that it was safe to come out of hiding.

How odd it was that, now, years later, he _was_ married to a Romanov.

A Romanov who did not want even _one_ child, let alone the somewhat excessive _twenty_ her sister had dreamed of.

* * *

As he probably knew from the first -despite his frustration- he was going to do anyway, Dimitri let Anya be. He stopped pressuring her for answers, agreed that, if it meant that much to her, they wouldn't have any children, and even - _finally_ , much to Anya's well concealed inward relief- assured her that, yes, she was enough.

 _They_ were a family. Just the two of them, happily married and living in the villa.

But, then, one late afternoon as Dimitri came whistling up the steps, surprised that for the first time since they'd moved in it was their newly-appointed cook who greeted him at the door and not his wife.

"Oh, Monsieur Dimitri," said their cook, "I didn't hear you drive up."

"I never drive up." He took off his hat, looking over their cook's shoulder, expecting Anya to appear at any moment. "It's easier to park at the foot of the hill and walk up."

"Yes, naturally, Monsieur."

Dimitri rarely heard their cook say a single word that was not in full agreement with something he stated first. Even if it was something that was impossible to _disagree_ with. Such as, "Rain, powerful wet droplets, aren't they?" or "Snow is cold," this cook would readily reply, " _Aye_ , Monsieur, tis wet," or "You're positively correct, Monsieur Dimitri. Do you fancy crumpets or tea-cakes?"

He passed the hat to their cook, who was more than willing to play housekeeper when the situation called for it. "Where's Anya?"

"Upstairs." Their cook looked both ways. "But if you'll excuse my saying so, Monsieur, something's not quite right with Madame Anya today. Failed to come down this mornin' so I thought I'd have a nice tray sent up, in case she was just suffering from a touch of fatigue. I've noticed she does, on occasion, if you'll forgive my impertinence."

Dimitri nodded impatiently, hoping to get to the point faster.

"Well, that maid that dreadful agency sent comes back to me -near to an hour later, so I'd check on your belongings in the north wing, make sure nothing was missin' if I was in your shoes- and tells me Madame Anya _threw up_ after eating. I hope you understand, Monsieur, that _my_ food has never made anyone sick before. _Never_."

"There's a first time for everything."

"Forgive my saying so, Monsieur Dimitri, but not for _me_ there isn't."

He cracked a smile, hoping their cook would catch on that he'd been joking. He wasn't sure if their cook _even_ understood humor, since this was the longest conversation they'd ever had of any real substance.

"And since then, Madame Anya has gone around with this _look_ on her face, like a cat that's digested a bad pigeon. Zat maid wanted to call the doctor, but I said it would be best to wait until you arrived, that _you'd_ know what we ought to do, Monsieur."

* * *

Anya was sitting in one of the upholstered chairs by the east hall window. Her small frame was engulfed by late-day sunlight streaming in through the open drapes, but though she looked straight into the golden warmth, the expression in her blue eyes was one of gaping deep down into an endlessly dark tunnel. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she was still dressed in her rose-pink nightclothes.

It was in this state that Dimitri found her, upon coming upstairs after their cook's warning that something was wrong.

"Grandmama sent a wire this morning," Anya said without turning to look at him. "There was a terrible car accident outside of the opera last night; Sophie is dead."

 _Poor Vlad._ Dimitri couldn't even begin to fathom how horrible his friend must be feeling over the loss of the woman he'd always carried a soft spot for in his heart. The poor dowager empress, too; Sophie had been her lady-in-waiting as well as her first cousin.

But, awful as the news was, it didn't explain why Anya had vomited up their cook's food that morning...

"And I'm pregnant," she added softly, after a long pause.

* * *

"How did this _happen_?" Dimitri wondered aloud.

He was standing out on the veranda, overlooking their spacious rose garden which would soon have to be attended to by professional hands, as soon as one of the dowager empress' under-gardeners could be sent here for employment without being missed or noticed.

Anya stood a short ways behind, in the double-sided glass doorway, one hand on her belly -as if she could feel something there, even though she wasn't showing yet- and the other rubbing the golden knob with its thumb pensively.

"Well, Dimitri," she said, letting go of the knob and stepping forward, her tone sardonic, "when a husband and a wife love each other very much..."

"I know about _that_! What I _meant_ was, we were careful." Since he had given into Anya's wish to never have any children, they'd only shared their 'martial duties' (though that wasn't the term either of them would have used) so to speak when she wasn't ovulating.

"Obviously not careful _enough_ ," Anya muttered to herself, shaking her head.

"We are going to keep it, though, aren't we? We aren't giving it away after it's born?"

Anya's eyes flashed at him, as if horrified he could even _suggest_ the alternative. Her baby -her poor, poor baby- _given away_? Maybe even to an orphanage as dreary and loathsome as the one _she'd_ spent ten years of her life living in? God, no! "Of _course_ we're keeping it!"

Relieved that Anya's unexplained desire never to become a mother was not going to result in their child growing up without them, Dimitri rubbed his forehead and made a casual remark about having someone set up a nursery in one of the spare rooms.

Anya didn't reply. She just touched her belly again and murmured, "Please let it be a girl," under her breath.

Dimitri never understood why, but this would become her constant wish, repeated frequently throughout the pregnancy. He couldn't fathom what would be so terrible about having a son, however, if Anya was so set on a daughter, there was no harm in allowing her to call this child 'she' far more often than their formerly employed 'it'.

Despite the fact that they didn't know for sure.

* * *

It was snowing the day Anya went into labor, and Vladimir, who came along with the doctor the empress sent, watched Dimitri pacing back and forth in front of a white-frosted window.

"She'll be fine, Dimitri!" he boomed. "Sit down."

"Maybe I should go in there."

"You've already tried twice and the large nurse with the mustache dragged you out by force," Vladimir pointed out.

"Details, details," he grumbled.

Finally the doctor appeared in the doorway.

"Well?" asked Vladimir.

Dimitri held his breath.

"Twins," the doctor announced.

Vladimir beamed. "How wonderful! Didn't I _tell_ you, Dimitri? Did I not say she looked too large for only one?"

"And Anya?" She was Dimitri's more immediate concern.

Some women weakened considerably after births. According to that dreadful crow of a midwife who'd come only a week ago to prepare Anya for what was coming, a large number of them _died_. The witch even had the nerve to say Anya's thighs looked too thin and that there was every chance for 'such a small woman to expire from the strain alone'.

"She is going to be fine," the doctor assured him. "She's sleeping now from a mild sedative we gave her, but she'll soon wake up and be well enough to bond with her children."

"When can I see her?"

"Give it at _least_ an hour, Sir. You are understandably concerned, but she needs her rest."

"The babies; could I see _them_?" he asked.

"Certainly, my good man," the doctor assured him. "They are being washed off in your downstairs lavatory. I'm sure the nurses will allow you to see them."

* * *

"How are you feeling?" Dimitri sat on the edge of the bed and put his arm around his wife.

"A little groggy." She moaned and stretched her legs. "How long did I sleep?"

"Three hours."

"I told them I didn't want that stupid sedative," she fumed tiredly, fighting back a yawn. "But would _they_ listen to _me_? Now I've missed seeing my daughter's birth!"

He stroked her hair and laughed. "Don't worry. You'll enjoy seeing the babies more now that they're cleaned up. Otherwise you would have thought you'd given birth to phlegm."

" _Babies_?" she repeated, blinking. "There was more than one?"

Had no one told her? "We had twins, Anya."

"Daughters?"

"One daughter." He took a deep breath, trying to break it to her gently. "And a son."

She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. "A son..."

"Anya..."

"Are they healthy?"

"Perfectly so!" Dimitri tightened his grasp around her shoulders and allowed his tone to go from cautious to cheerful.

"Well, where _are_ they?" She glared at the door. "I've been awake almost five minutes now and no one's bringing them!"

"I'll find out what the hold up is," Dimitri promised, kissing her hairline and heading for the door.

Less than ten minutes later, Anya was holding the boy and Dimitri was holding the girl.

"We could call her Natasha," Anya suggested, looking over at the besotted new father with a half-smile.

He made a face.

"Because of _War and Peace_?"

He nodded.

"Tatiana?" she offered next, thinking of her second eldest sister.

"Tatiana," he repeated. The baby in his arms seemed almost to gurgle up at him. "I think she likes that."

"What about _him_?" She looked at Tatiana's twin, snuggled so securely in her own arms.

"I was thinking Alexei," Dimitri told her. "For your brother."

The blood drained from Anya's face, leaving her white as a ghost. She stared up at her husband, clutching the baby tighter, with an irrationally petrified expression of horror.

That was when _everything_ suddenly made perfect sense. Her fear of having _any_ children, even though she loved them. Her unhappiness upon learning she was pregnant that was about so much more than just Sophie's unfortunate death...

Everything was clear now.

At last Dimitri knew what it was she'd been holding back, keeping in, all this time.

Anastasia Romanov's little brother's hemophilia hadn't been public knowledge, for fear of what such news would do to an already unhappy country, but the palace servants all knew. Even the kitchen boys who never gave it so much as a second thought. Dimitri had always found conversations about the young boy's disease boring and mostly tuned them out. But he knew now, as a grown man, that bleeders don't just _appear_ ; they come from some genetic fault passed down through their mothers.

Anya was not a bleeder herself, being female, but she held within the all too easy ability to pass on the painful disease to her son.

Unlike Dimitri, who could look away and amuse himself elsewhere, Anastasia could never 'turn off' her brother's suffering. She'd seen his pain, seen him limping into state dinners and balls, trying to be brave. So readily she could imagine his end, so much quicker and yet somehow far more vile than the rest of her family's passing. He would have been so _easy_ to kill; he'd never stood a chance.

To her, there was only _one_ Alexei. There could never be another. And to name her son -a son she'd never wanted to have in the first place to avoid this- after him seemed only to be _asking_ for trouble. Just _begging_ the fates to make him a hemophiliac. It was like naming a boat after _The Titanic_.

"Oh, Anya, I'm _so_ sorry," whispered Dimitri, shaking his head. "Why didn't you tell me that's what you were afraid of?"

"I guess I was scared that if I _talked_ about it...I'd...I don't know..."

"We'll call him Ivan Nicholas. For our fathers."

* * *

It had been seven years, and although they'd taken him to about a dozen specialists, all of whom said that, without question, little Ivan Nicholas was _not_ a hemophiliac, Dimitri would still catch Anya looking at their son anxiously out of the corner of her eye.

When Tatiana scraped her knee or banged her shin, it was just a scraped knee or a banged shin, but when _Nicky_ (that was what they called their Ivan) hurt himself, it was a borderline _event_ if Dimitri wasn't there to keep the situation calm.

In everything else, Anya was the rational, stable one. When it came to Ivan's well-being, all her common sense went out the window. Only in quiet reflection, sometimes _hours_ after the matter, could she admit that, yes, she'd overreacted.

Which was why, when Nicky had somehow got ahold of their cook's cheese knife and -as young children are wont to do- sliced himself open (only his thumb, thank God) and was gushing out dark, heavy blood, Dimitri was intent on keeping Anya away from the kitchen.

Tatiana came in to get his attention; she wanted to show him a puzzle she'd been working on all week and had just finished. Then she noticed Ivan's thumb. "Ivan played with knives. He's in trouble! Big, big, _biiiiig_ , trouble... Right, Papa?"

Dimitri didn't have time for this. Cook was protesting in long-winded French how she could have sworn she'd put the knife away in a high draw, how it wasn't her fault Monsieur's son could climb like a monkey. A room away, Pooka was howling at something. Poor Ivan was wailing inconsolably, as even the quietest child will if he sees enough of his own blood for the first time, and there was still the matter of keeping pressure on the thumb and figuring out if it would need stitches or not.

"Tatiana," he said shortly, not glancing up from Ivan's bloody thumb, "go and make sure Mama doesn't come in here. Go show her your puzzle."

If Dimitri had looked up, even briefly, he would have noticed Tatiana never moved and might have realized his mistake sooner. Tatiana could be a handful, but she rarely blatantly disobeyed him. However, preoccupied as he was, he just assumed she'd gone and done as he asked.

That was when Anya appeared, drawn in by the wails Dimitri hadn't managed to muffle fast enough, the cries that a mother's instinct can hear even if a howling dog is droning them out.

Dimitri cursed under his breath when he heard his wife gasp. He turned on his daughter. "Darn it, Tatiana! Didn't I tell you to-"

She blinked at him, having only understood her name and his angry tone.

 _I'm an idiot. Of_ course _Tatiana didn't understand!_ Dimitri would have laughed if things hadn't been so tense. He'd been speaking in _Russian_!

Ivan had taught himself Russian, and so _he_ understood, but the German, French, and English Anya insisted on both children learning were already too much for their Tatiana.

She had a knack for many other things, but languages were hard for her.

It was understandable; even Nicky, who could speak _all four_ languages that circulated in their household, got mixed up from time to time. Both he and Tatiana fell into the habit of referring to Pooka as a female in both French and English, no matter how many times Dimitri and Anya attempted to correct them.

So Tatiana had not understood, and Anya saw the blood. The gasp she took in, she never let out, almost immediately going lightheaded and lurching sideways.

Dimitri had to run over and catch her before she fell to the ground. "Anya!"

Her eyes only opened halfway and her limbs were as floppy as a rag-doll.

"Anya, he's _not_ sick... Anya, the doctors swore he doesn't have it; it's just a cut."

"I just see blood..." she murmured into his shoulder. "So much blood."

"It's only a cut," he said again. "He's fine. Everything's all right now."

Anya took in a deep breath and pulled herself together.

 _Everything's all right..._ He'd said.

And it _was_.


End file.
